UK body urges competitive mobile landscape

Make The Air Fair, an initiative established to urge UK regulator Ofcom to curb BT’s dominance of the mobile industry, has received support from more than 100,000 people for a proposed cap on the amount of spectrum operators can own, repots Mobile World Live. The number is in line with the 103,000 responses received for an earlier Ofcom consultation into the role of BT’s infrastructure arm, Openreach, which was titled “Fixing Britain’s Internet”. In a statement, Make The Air Fair campaigners said there is “huge” support for a 30% cap on the amount of airwaves a mobile network can own “to safeguard future competition”. The campaign group, led by Three UK with TalkTalk, CityFibre, Federation of Communication Services, Gamma and Relish, called on Ofcom to ensure lower prices, better speeds and a more competitive industry to benefit all UK customers. Meanwhile the UK National Infrastructure Commission published a report ranking the country as 54th in the world for 4G coverage, notably behind less developed nations including Romania, Albania and Peru. In November last year, Ofcom said it would prevent BT from bidding on 40 MHz of spectrum available in the 2.3 GHz band in a planned process, although it did not place a bar on 3.4 GHz bids because of the lack of immediate use. Read more

Tuesday, 24 January 2017

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